Bulgaria, among Iran’s biggest trading partners in Eastern Europe, is among the European countries Iran considered striking if President Trump escalated the war, The Financial Times reported last week. That’s due to both its south-eastern location on the continent and two U.

S. Air Force KC-135 refueling planes using one of its bases to support Operation Epic Fury. After Bulgarian officials announced the departure of those planes over the weekend, Iran on Monday issued its latest warning to NATO members that allow their territory to be a jumping off point for American or Israeli military action against the regime, saying it “has the right to target the point of origin and source of any act of aggression against” it.

Iran has made similar threats to the United Kingdom, with a drone striking a British airbase in Cyprus in March. That same month, Iran fired two ballistic missiles at the remote U.K.-U.S. base in the Indian Ocean known as Diego Garcia. And Turkey in March said NATO’s air defenses had intercepted several ballistic missiles launched from Iran.

While Iran clearly wants to maintain the perception that it’s willing and capable of striking Europe, analysts aren’t convinced it really wants to invite NATO more fully into the fight. “I don’t think the juice is worth the squeeze in terms of antagonizing NATO.

. I don’t think that attacking European targets gets them anything extra than attacking [Gulf] targets doesn’t get them,” said Alan Eyre, a former head of the Iran office at the U.S. Consulate in Dubai, now with the Middle East Institute. David Cattler, a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis, likewise said that an Iranian strike on a NATO ally would be a major escalation but a bad strategic trade for Tehran, as “that would probably transform Europeans who largely have sought distance from the Iran war into active participants against” the regime.

He said the more immediate issue is Iranian coercion. “The reality is Tehran doesn’t need to fire a missile at Bulgaria to achieve an effect. Threatening the countries that provide the bases, logistic support, access to the United States is itself an attempt to raise the price of supporting Washington in an attempt to weaken allied cohesion,” Cattle told The Hill.

Insiders can read the full report at thehill.com.

Qatar's prime minister will visit Tehran in an effort to relaunch diplomacy after the US and Iran traded recriminations over Washington's promise to increase economic pressure on Tehran by targeting its trade partners for sanctions. Qatar, a Gulf neighbour of Iran and a US ally, has served as a back-channel negotiator for the warring parties and played a direct role in securing the June ceasefire that briefly led to a cessation of hostilities.

The visit comes as the war nears its sixth month with fighting largely paused but no diplomatic breakthrough in sight. The two sides remain at odds over control of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for global oil supplies that Tehran has used as leverage.

The memorandum of understanding broke down in part because of differences over the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman where one-fifth of the world's oil supplies passed before the war began on 28 February. The guns have gone mostly silent, as the US military's Central Command has not reported any attacks on Iran for nearly a month.

Washington appears to be leaning more on economic pressure by announcing plans to cut Iran off from its trading partners with increased sanctions. Hormuz oil flows have fallen to a three-month low, with just five million barrels per day transiting on Monday, according to the latest ship-tracking data.

Before the war, the strait carried roughly 20 million barrels per day of crude oil. Iran's Revolutionary Guards said yesterday that Iran and Oman had agreed how to share the waterway and its revenues, but a senior Iranian source later said the two countries were still working on the details of an agreement.

Despite an aerial bombardment earlier in the war that severely diminished Iran's conventional forces, Tehran has maintained enough missile and drone capability to attack Gulf neighbours that house US military bases and disrupt oil tankers in the strait.

The United Nations' International Maritime Organization has reported 70 incidents in the Strait of Hormuz since 28 February that have killed 19 seafarers. Thousands of others have died, mostly in Iran and Lebanon, since the US and Israel attacked Iran with the stated goals of denying Iran a nuclear weapon, helping Iranians topple their government, and destroying Iran's missile programme.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani will discuss the continuation of Qatar's mediation efforts and other developments in the region during his visit to Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said. Qatar's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said on X that Sheikh Mohammed would also address freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the need to return to the status quo before 28 February, while also discussing with Iranian officials ways to "de-escalate tensions and create the conditions conducive to dialogue.

" The international waterway was open to free navigation before the war, but Iran has since clung to its control of the strait as leverage and a revenue source, seeking to charge ships a commission, which the US has opposed. "An agreement with Oman over the Strait of Hormuz has not been finalised," the senior Iranian source told Reuters, adding that the talks were continuing on the details of an accord.

That seemed to contradict a statement by Brigadier General Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesperson for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who said Iran and Oman had "reached results that are acceptable to both sides" on controlling the strait and its revenues.

Mr Mohebbi said the strait would remain shut unless the US met Tehran's conditions under the interim ceasefire, or memorandum of understanding, that the two sides signed in June before it unravelled. Those conditions include an end to the US blockade on Iranian ports, compensation and removal of sanctions.

Iran and Oman have held on-and-off talks for weeks about controlling traffic through the strait. Tehran and Washington have each tried to assert control over the channel, imposing separate blockades.

Six Months Into the Iran War, the United States Has No Good Options Operation Epic Fury failed to produce the quick victory that President Donald Trump predicted and may be remaking the political order in the Middle East. By experts and staff - Published Six months into the U.

S. war with Iran, the conflict’s end is nowhere in sight. President Donald Trump confidently predicted at the war’s start that it would last “four to five weeks.” At the end of March, he said it would take “maybe two weeks, maybe a couple of days longer, to do the job.

” Since then, he has repeatedly declared the United States victorious. The reality is different. Iran’s regime has neither collapsed nor capitulated, despite intense U.S. and Israeli air strikes that have killed many of the country’s prewar leaders and devastated its military infrastructure.

A rickety ceasefire agreed to in April and extended in June continues to hold, but tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remains far below prewar levels. Trump has periodically threatened to launch even more destructive attacks on Iran, only to back down because the U.

S. military lacks the defensive interceptors needed to protect U.S. allies and military bases in the region. Stymied on the military front, Trump has recently signaled that he will now wait for economic pressure to force Iran’s leadership to its knees.

To that end, he vowed last week to unleash an “Economic D-Day” that will be “the most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country!” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent unveiled Operation Economic Outcast on Monday. For now, the plan leans heavily on threats to punish countries that refuse to “tighten the noose” around Iran voluntarily rather than steps to compel them to do so.

There is good reason for that. The so-called secondary sanctions that Washington is proposing could, in Bessent’s words, “blow up the global financial system.” China buys more than 80 percent Iranian oil exports, and it has already forced the Trump administration to abandon steep tariffs on Chinese goods by threatening to cut U.

S. access to critical minerals. Chinese President Xi Jinping is also set to visit the White House next month. The potential to roil the global economy and trigger a diplomatic crisis with China are why so many experts doubt that the administration will ever fully follow through on its threat to force Iran’s “complete global isolation.

” But with the current stalemate keeping oil prices high and raising questions about U.S. power and influence, can the Trump administration afford to allow Iran to continue to threaten its neighbors and restrict commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz?

To get a better understanding of the Trump administration’s strategy and whether it is ceding the once-dominant U.S. position in the Persian Gulf, I sat down with my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Steven Cook for the latest episode of the CFR podcast, The President’s Inbox.

[Video: https://youtu.be/Asykfcte8ZM?si=fZu8CHFM0uKxyoK8] Here are my three takeaways: 1. The United States has no good options to compel Iran to meet its demands. Escalating militarily is risky because Iran can strike its Arab neighbors and U.S. military bases in the region.

Escalating economically is problematic because it means antagonizing China and risking significant economic retaliation. The White House is left hoping that the U.S. naval blockade will deepen the effect of existing U.S. sanctions and force the Iranian leadership to sue for peace.

This line of thinking assumes that the Iranian people will be able to put meaningful political pressure on their leaders. But Iran’s hardline leaders have already shown a ruthless willingness by using deadly force against any Iranians who take to the streets to protest.

2. U.S. allies in the region are hedging against a possible decline of U.S. influence and interest in the Middle East. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Pakistan and Turkey. The text of the agreement has not been released, so it is difficult to know what to make of claims that it constitutes a true defensive alliance with significant NATO–like protections.

Pakistan and Turkey certainly did not, as Steven put it, “send the cavalry to help” when the Houthis fired on Saudi Arabia just forty-eight hours after the agreement was signed. The United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, is placing its chips on deepening the Abraham Accords, rather than following Riyadh.

The rift between the two regional powers is real and could complicate U.S. diplomacy going forward. 3. The U.S. military presence in the Gulf will likely diminish in the years to come, but that could be a mixed blessing. For years, policymakers and experts have argued that the United States should reduce its role in the Middle East.

In recent months, Steven and other Middle East experts have argued that this process is already underway as the Iran war ushers in a new regional order. But be careful what you wish for: a United States that is less involved in the Middle East could still see events emerging from the region that harm U.

S. interests. As Steven put it, the “Iranians, the Saudis, the Turks, the Israelis, and others are going to try to order the region [in a way] that best serves their interests. And there’s the possibility for continued conflict and chaos as a result.

” Oscar Berry and Asher Ross assisted in the preparation of this article. This work represents the views solely of the author(s). The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Conclusion: The End of Unipolarity The ongoing conflict in 2026 proves one stark reality: the era of uncontested American hegemony in the Middle East is over. The fact that Iran can absorb direct U.S. military strikes and crushing sanctions without its government collapsing is entirely due to the support of Russia and China.

As long as this trilateral alliance holds, the geopolitical balance ...